Creating motivation

Date: Nov. 24
Mileage: 25.1
Hours: 1:45
November mileage: 614.9
Temperature upon departure: 39
Rainfall: .19"

I've been feeling really strong lately, and I figure I should continue to chip away at base miles as long as the blurry line between buildup and overtraining hasn't been breached. I've decided that all of the training I do for the next four months is going to be entirely dedicated to three things: conditioning my body to stay hunched over (or beside) a bicycle for a long, long time; practicing different camping, repair and survival situations; and keeping my bad knee healthy. Speed won't serve me at all after several days on the trail, and I'm not even going to flirt with it. A rookie like me will benefit most from longevity, patience and confidence - as much as I can trick myself into mustering.

That said, there are definitely going to be numerous days, like today, where I am going to have a hard time dredging up motivation to ride. Surprisingly, the threat of a slow, cold, bonked-out death isn't really doing it for me. So some days I have to contrive little rewards. Today, my reward was "I'm going to listen to Korn."

Yeah. I know. Korn was one of the more self-indulgent bands I circulated on my sticky CD player in the 90s. I didn't pretend that they made good music, or that I even really liked them. But, just as a band can manufacture music, a band can apparently also manufacture anger. And when I needed a funnel for my flailing teenage angst, Korn was there for me.

The appeal of no-strings-attached anger could be why nu-metal didn't die the death it deserved in the late-90s, as was the fate of the Big Band revival and California ska. Korn persevered, and today I downloaded their latest (released in 2007?!) untitled album. I set out on my bike for a sluggish warm-up, as per usual, worked my way out to the solitude of North Douglas, and kicked on the iPod early, losing the raspy rhythm of my flem-coated breaths to a barrage of bad noise.

Irritability was instantaneous, they way it was the one time I saw Korn in concert, in an overcrowded hockey arena with hypnotic strobe lights the stench of sweat and stale water and my friend Adam in his black eyeliner trying to look his gothiest. That was the basic setting, but the only specific I can remember is that everything was so, so loud as I followed Adam through a violent sea of fists and flailing steel-toed boots and I was getting bruised, everywhere, but I didn't care. We were mad and we were going to get to the front and we were going to plow through the fortress of churning bodies if it killed us all.

Why seek out directionless anger? I didn't know then and I don't really know now. But here I was in the year 2007, a full-grown woman on a bicycle, with Korn pulsating through my little white earbuds. I felt my lips tighten, felt my eyes narrow, felt my legs pound into the pedals, felt the wind and rain tear at my face, felt my heart rate explode. And then I felt hate ... hate for the November rain, hate for the gravel-strewn road, hate for the puddles and the invisible craters, hate for the cars and the taxis and the gravel trucks coated in new snow, hate for my bicycle and its tires with the pressure too low and its stupid mud-streaked fenders and cheap headlight and odometer that ticks up in steady increments while I hate and hate and hate.

And just like that, I found myself transferring this rush of new energy to crazy speed that I rarely see. I ccould hear my raspy breaths again even over the battering noise; I was all but gasping for air. And I realized that I didn't actually feel hate. I felt great.

We all need to vent sometimes.

90 miles of Thanksgiving

Date: Nov. 22
Mileage: 91.1
Hours: 6:05
November mileage: 589.8
Temperature upon departure: 38
Rainfall: 0"

Mile .5: If all is quiet on New Year's Day, Thanksgiving Day must make up the balance. In the minimalist light of 8:36 a.m., traffic pours over the bridge, steaming to the A&P, turning for Wal-Mart and Fred Meyer. It's rush hour with cranberries. My dreams of solitude diced, I'm reminded of at least dozen Thanksgivings, in the back seat of my parents' vehicles, with the low winter sun glazing the roadside grass in iridescent shades of yellow. It was over the river and through the woods with a freeway and strip malls. We would marvel at the stream of empty parking lots until we passed a single store buffered by a wall of cars. "Look Dad, ShopKo is open today!" "Anyone who has to shop on Thanksgiving is a loser," my dad would proclaim, and we'd all feel self-satisfied, but secretly, a little bit lonely.

Mile 31: I can't believe how warm it is today, and calm. Despite the ideal traveling weather, I'm having a hard time finding my legs this morning, and the first two hours inch along. Many years ago, when my maternal grandmother was still alive, my family always split the holiday between my two sets of grandparents. When you're a kid, there aren't many holidays more pointless than Thanksgiving, unless it's time for pie. Unfortunately, that pie usually just comes as a stomach-churning punctuation point after a long sentence of only vaguely familiar relatives and smothering questions and gray stuffing and sticky yams. My mom's mom, fortunately, always understood that Thanksgiving was not set up for kids, and always had some new toys to present us. Then she looked away wryly as we slipped into the hidden safety of the back room. She was all-knowing back then, and ageless, and I never imagined there would be a time when I would not know her.

Mile 39: The pace is starting to pick up. I'm beginning to feel more pep, more alert, and I can even see the sun trying to slip through thick strips of clouds. My dad's mom never kept many toys in the house. My cousins and I always ended up rooting through a musty box in the basement for an ancient, truly ancient game of Life. For many years, we just played with the money. Eventually, we taught ourselves the board game. After we revised the rules to work around a myriad of missing pieces, we were hooked. We dug it out every year. Something rang true about simply choosing the color of your car, rolling the dice, and watching sheer chance make everything work out. We were certain that's what Life was all about.

Mile 45: I don't think I have ridden all the way to the end of the road since August, or perhaps September. It looks different stripped of its green and framed with the thick snow that now coats the mountains. But it no longer feels very far away, and even the memories don't seem too distant. The adults would never let us eat pie until we finished all of our Thanksgiving dinner, which I rarely had much interest in. However, one year I discovered a dessert loophole through my Aunt Marcia's gigantic bowl of Chex Mix. Mixed with chocolate, powdered sugar, corn syrup, peanut butter and the vestiges of breakfast cereal, I was allowed to snarf all I wanted under the guise that it was an "appetizer." I was always grateful to Aunt Marcia and her Chex Mix. She was an real Ironman, a finisher of crazy triathlons, and built of pure steel, although I had no idea what any of that meant back then. Now that I have an idea what it means, what it feels like, to aspire with all your heart for a chance to be an Ironman, I'd like to go back to those Thanksgivings, with my face stuffed full of gooey "appetizer," and ask her where she found her strength.

Mile 55: I take my last picture for the day. The lighting makes everything look like sunset, but it is only a little after noon. I was well into adulthood the Thanksgiving I bowled a 131, at a quiet little bowling alley in Ogden, Utah, where my sisters, cousins and I sneaked out after dinner. Having just won the game with a surprising number of points that I would never see again, I was sure I was strong and in charge and could do no wrong. We drove back to my grandparents' house on a street with railroad tracks built high above the pavement. A short, steep hill bridged the tracks, and usually cars slowed to a crawl over this daunting obstacle. But there weren't many on the road that day. As we approached the tracks, my cousin behind the wheel announced, "What do you think? Should I gun in?" The others in the car were silent. I was the oldest. "Well, yeah," I said. She punched the gas and charged at full acceleration toward the hill. I remember feeling a G-force rush as we shot up the berm, but that was the only rush that came before the world disappeared beneath a slow and deadly silent place. The group of cousins following behind us said they saw sky, blue sky, deep below our wheels as we rocketed off the tracks and plummeted to the road that seemed a mile below us. We landed in a barrage of screeching and sparks. My cousin panicked and overcorrected. I saw and experienced a lot of different things in that swerving moment of helpless momentum. My cross-country road trip. The turkey I ate for dinner. My maternal grandmother. That moment represents what I think it feels like to know it's all over. But my cousin managed to regain control of her car, and we somehow returned to our lane without flipping over. I'll never understand how. I think I was the only one in the car who was that frightened, although I'll never know. We never spoke of it again.

The final 35 miles of my ride pass by in a blur. I'm really feeling great now, and my legs are warm and strong. I munch on Goldfish crackers out of a frame bag, trying hard not to overindulge. In just a few hours, I'll be gorging myself with barbecued turkey, cranberry-pomegranate sauce and apple pie. There will be dozens of people in a hot room and I will have to meet many of them, an inundation of information and food and possibly new friends. But for now, I just want to pedal, and I want to quietly miss my family.

New NPR interview

Click here to listen!

I'm sending in a weekly blog post for the Bryant Park Project blog. It even has its own Main Series Page. It's a fun project and I think it's going to help keep me honest and determined in my training, now that the training log stretches beyond my family and extended network of InterWeb friends. I hope NPR continues to call me, because it will be probably be more entertaining to talk about my misadventures once I start camping out and putting in longer hours at night. Will Jill hold on to her sanity? Stay tuned!

I hope everyone has a great Thanksgiving. My plan is to earn my turkey. I mean really earn it. Happy T-day!

Embarrassing injury

Date: Nov. 20
Mileage: 23.0
Hours: 2:00
November mileage: 498.7
Temperature upon departure: 34
Rainfall: 0"

I was strolling up to ask a co-worker a question today when he blurted out, "Are you limping again?"

"Huh?" I asked, confused. My knee felt great. My foot felt great. I'd been gimp-free for more than six weeks, just about a personal record.

"I don't know," he continued. "You're kinda limping. What happened? Is it that bike thing again?"

I suddenly realized the acute pain I was feeling must be physically manifesting itself. But what could I say? That bike thing? You mean that bike thing where I grunt on my heavy bike all the way up to Eaglecrest just to look for snow, and there isn't even much snow up there, but I ride anyway on a faint trail across the frozen tundra and I manage to ride really fast until I hit a puddle that isn't completely frozen and plant my front tire 8 inches deep and my bike stops cold but my body flies forward and I'd probably still be spiraling into space if I wasn't stopped abruptly and painfully by my stem slamming into a very personal place that I can't describe in this place of business except to say that if I were a man, I would probably never have children ... That kind of bike thing?

But instead I just said, "Yeah, it's that bike thing again."

Pray for snow

Date: Nov. 19
Mileage: 28.6
Hours: 2:15
November mileage: 475.7
Temperature upon departure: 35
Rainfall: 0.06"

I spent some time today scouting the Fish Creek area in hopes of locating future winter trails, should snow ever finally take hold in Juneau. While mashing over faint foot paths that cross slightly-frozen bogs, I found several tasty possibilities. But who knows what their conditions will be once the snow settles? I am actually considering joining the Juneau Snowmobile Club, so I can advocate for grooming and receive information about local trails. I can already imagine how I'll explain myself when they ask me what kind of snowmobile I drive ... "Well, it's gray, and it has a two-stroke engine with extremely low emissions, and big fat tires, and, well, it's a bicycle ..."

With no new snow for a week and no snow anywhere in the forecast, it is beginning to look like Juneau is going to have one of those "normal" warm winters. The cyclists I meet are absolutely thrilled. Their road bikes remain useful in November and the relative dryness compared to fall has them out in numbers I haven't seen in months. I join the skiers on the sidelines, staring anxiously at the brown slopes and praying that a few of these flurries take root. I don't need snow to be happy. I need snow to survive. Training for a 350-mile race on a snowy trail means training on snowy trails. Without snow, I'm just biding my time and have fun while splashing through half-frozen beaver ponds, for what that's worth. But as I look at my new snow bike and imagine all of things I have yet to learn about it, I'm beginning to worry splashy fun may not be enough.

But what can I do about it? Lucky for me, I don't need snow to simply ride my bicycle. Cycling is one of those beautiful sports that can be enjoyed year round ... snow, sleet, wind, rain, mud, wind, and even, on rare occasions, sun. Come to think of it ... there are few conditions that can prevent a person from riding a bicycle, if a person is determined enough to ride. Unless, that is, the Juneau Snowmobile Club decides to start posting "No Bicycles" signs on the trails. Then I might just have to take up Nordic skiing.

I like my dirt lightly frosted

Date: Nov. 18
Mileage: 39.6
Hours: 3:15
November mileage: 447.1
Temperature upon departure: 33
Rainfall: 0.05"

Mountain biking conditions were perfect today out in the Mendenhall Valley - maybe a degree or two below freezing, with ice-infused mud and sand hardpacked to crunchy perfection.

Riding along the Mendenhall Lake shoreline is usually like a bad dream - the one where you're pedaling in slow motion, and you crank and struggle, but no matter what you do, you just can't go any faster. Today the sand was frozen as tough and smooth as a gravel road. I became so absorbed in the thrill of amping up to 20 mph on a sandy beach that I forgot I wasn't on an actual trail, and nearly face planted over the sandy berms of slightly-frozen streams, more than once.

The trail riding was just as good. I challenge you to dream up a surface that would be more fun to ride across than paper ice - smashing and crackling and coasting as you draw a shattered line over what is normally the softest of bogs. Especially since I have yet to install my studded tires. Weeee!

My year in Homer conditioned me to regard bald eagles as pets, and that notion hasn't worn off even after 16 months in Juneau. This one was eating a moldy-looking salmon carcass when I marched up to take its photo. This picture isn't even excessively zoomed - this is basically where I was standing. The eagle wouldn't retreat for anything but continued to broadcast its irritation with a piercing stare as it tore away at the black flesh. Eagles remind me so much of cats.

The dead salmon was bigger than the eagle, and still the eagle wouldn't share. So much like cats.

Snow flurries, overcast, light wind ... all in all, an ideal day for cycling (for Juneau, at least.) This seems to be the weather trend for weekends ... Monday through Friday are awful. Saturday and Sunday are amazing. Too bad Saturday and Sunday don't make up my weekend. I tend to think of Sunday as "Tuesday." So this trend that seems to work great for everybody else just means I have to consume large chunks of weekday time to squeeze in beautiful weekend rides, but they're worth it. I think if the weather gods ever came to me to make a bargain, saying, "OK, we'll take away any and all rain in Juneau for four whole months. But to make it so, the temperature will never rise above freezing that entire time," I'd make that deal, and I wouldn't even feel guilty.

Cool! I'm in a book!

An interesting thing arrived in the mail today: "The Bicycle Book: Wit, Wisdom & Wanderings," recently released by Jim Joyce of the Bike Exchange Web site. It's a whole book dedicated to bicycle essays and cartoons, written by various people who contributed to the Web site over the years. One of those essays happens to be mine.

It's been a trip back in time reading it again, because I always write so autobiographically. This is an essay I wrote in early 2004 - nearly four years ago - when I lived in a $300-a-month studio apartment in Tooele, Utah - an apartment that didn't even have a working refrigerator - and I spent my days dreaming about ways to support myself by becoming a freelance writer/graphic designer. I also spent my days riding over and around the Oquirrh Mountains on my first road bike, because my Trek 6500 was out of commission and wasn't very interested in mountain bikes at the time anyway. The essay starts out, "I have always thought of myself as a cycle 'tourist,' someone who uses a bicycle as a means of travel, escape and relaxation."

There's nothing in the essay about snow, or Alaska, or the virtues of fat tires. It's funny to realize how much I've changed since my early incarnations as a cyclist ... and also how much I've stayed the same. Because even though I don't travel much any more, and even though I can only escape as far as 40.4 miles from my home, and even though I can't even remember what relaxing on a bicycle is like, I still remain a "tourist." It's just that, as a tourist, I see the world very differently now.

Anyway, it was fun to see it published after all these years. I chopped off the whole introduction and posted it on my blog more than a year ago - "Of Dogs and Cyclists" - mostly because I liked the tone and thought I'd never see print. It's one of the few scrapes at subtle humor I've ever attempted (I really can't write humor. It's truly a shame.) Now it's in a book. Cool!

I read through quite a bit of the rest of the book at the gym today. It's a light read and a lot of fun. It's peppered with cartoons, a few of which made me laugh out loud. I already signed my life away to appear in this book and don't monetarily benefit from its sales, but I still recommend it as a worthwhile purchase. With Christmas approaching and stockings waiting for quirky little gifts, this book would make a good present for all of the cyclists on your list. We cyclists aren't too picky. We like just about anything and everything about bicycles, and this book definitely fits that description. You can order it here.